Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/478



the necessary capital to build the bridge. In all this labor, trial, vexation of spirit and bitter opposition, WiUiam Beck was in the forefront of the battle, and when the bridge was finally opened to traffic, he headed the grand procession across the bridge with the little old horse and buggy which had for so many years carried him to and from the farm on the Base Line road to his place of business in the city — and Joseph Buchtel led the procession on horseback as grand marshal.

As a fitting conclusion to this notice, we append the lines of Stephen May- bell, written at the time the opposition to the bridge was at its height, and the friends of the bridge were cast into the slough of despondency.

Stephen Maybell was at the time a typo on one of the city papers, and a man of genius and poetic ability. He left Portland before the bridge was built, go- ing to San Francisco, where he became the poet of the great labor upheaval led by Dennis Kearney, and celebrated as the revolution of the "sand lots."

WILLAMETTE BRIDGES.

By Stephen Maybell, 1870.

Behind the pines had sunk the sun,

And darkness hung o'er Oregon, When on the banks of Willamette

A youth was seen to set and set; And set and sing unto the moon

A wild, yet sweet pathetic tune — "They're going to build, I feel it yet,

A bridge across the Willamette."

The flat boat drifted slowly o'er

And reached at last the other shore; The captain, brave, courageous soul !

Fished her to land with fishing pole — When hark! from o'er the waves a strain —

That youth, that voice, that wild refrain, "They're going to build, I feel it yet,

A bridge across the Willamette."

Dark grew the night, the south wind blew,

Down came the Oregonian dew ; Down mountain sides the torrents pour'd,

The streamlets rose, the river roar'd — Still sung that youth with webbed toes ;

'Neath umberell, in rubber clothes — "They're going to build, I feel it yet,

A bridge across the Willamette."

A Modoc chief, in pure Chinook,

Cried "Klahowyah, tumtum, mamook; Hiyu tyee yah mucka muck,

Nowitka nike tika cumtux ; All the same white man, nika klonas,

Gum stick, mamook, skookum hyas ;" But silent grew his savage tongue.

For high above his war whoops rung — "They're going to build, I feel it yet,

A bridge across the Willamette."